


Damaged

by darkandstormyslash



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Cigarettes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 09:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13854963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkandstormyslash/pseuds/darkandstormyslash
Summary: Tommy gets jumped in London. Set in season 2.





	Damaged

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NuclearGers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuclearGers/gifts).



> Written as a fandom exchange for @nuclearGers. Hope you like it!

His teeth taste gritty and feel too big for his mouth, which is swollen inside with the copper taste of blood. Eventually, Tommy knows he has to open his eyes, but for now he’s more than happy keeping them closed against the dull throbbing of his cheek, pressed in against the stones of the cobbled street. Beneath the dull ache of pain and the bruised throbbing of his body, he’s furious with himself. It’s only his second time down in London on business and here he is, lying in an abandoned back-alley and bleeding gently into the gutter.

The men who attacked him are long gone and he doesn’t even know who they were. Plain-clothes policemen, Italian mobsters, random muggers; here in London it could be anyone. Nobody knows him and the Shelby name is worth nothing. It might even be some rival gang from Birmingham; following him down south and picking their moment in an untraceable city.

Dimly he hears the click of a cane against the cobbles by his face and his first thought is of Chester Campbell. Major Campbell walks with a cane now and probably would relish the thought of finding Tommy Shelby plastered across the pavement in a London street. He finally manages to crack his good eye open and refocus around the world. The cane is thin and metal, the shoes black and polished, and the body above him solid and uncompromisingly dressed. It’s Alfie Solomons, who features directly after Campbell in the list of people Tommy very much does not want to see right now.

It takes effort, and he can feel every knock his body took strongly complaining, but under Alfie’s confused glare Tommy slowly manages to push himself into a sitting position. With shaking fingers, he tugs out a bent packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Alfie’s cane snaps out and knocks them from his hands, sending them flopping weakly into a damp puddle in the gutter. Tommy watches as the rectangular packet half sinks into the grime.

“Filthy habit.” Alfie rumbles from above him.

It’s a habit Tommy picked up in France during the war. In a world of mud and hell sometimes life itself was a burning pinch of light, which took away the gnawing hunger and flowed warmth into his lungs. It feels now as if he’s always smoked. The habit, like so many others, has slipped into his life as a normalcy now the war is over.

“Do you know who it was?” he asks steadily, not getting up because somehow sitting at Alfie’s feet gives him a strange kind of power. If he stands up he’s just one injured and battered man swaying in front of another. Down here on the cobbles his status is uncertain. “Who attacked me?”

Alfie’s eyes widen and he gives a shrug that says everything and nothing. Namely it says to Tommy that of course Alfie knows and naturally he won’t tell Tommy.

“We’re meant to be allies.” Tommy mutters, groping out for the fallen cigarette packet. He can feel Alfie’s eyes fixed on him as he pulls one out, damp and bent, and rubs it along his bottom lip. He can taste a hundred years of ground-down oppression and probably a good dose of cholera as well.

There’s a moments silence from above him, and when Alfie’s voice finally comes it sounds a little vague and distant, “Do you know what you look like down there, Mister Shelby?”

Tommy doesn’t answer.

“I bet you do. ‘Course you do. Get up.”

Tommy doesn’t move.

“Get up.” Alfie sounds angry now, but it’s not just anger that growls in his voice. There’s an edge in it that keeps Tommy sat where he is on the cobbles out of sheer contrariness, the bent soggy cigarette still hanging out one corner of his mouth. “You’ve got no business sitting down there looking like that.”

Tommy looks up through his lashes with the eye that isn’t swollen shut, “Have you got a light, Mister Solomons?”

Alfie reaches down from above and yanks him upright by the front of his torn shirt. There’s a moment of sudden unexpected weightlessness which comes with the rather unsettling realisation that Alfie is strong. The man can lift a lot of weight. Despite outward appearances, there’s a core of strength in his body which makes Tommy feel even more like a lanky puppet with the strings cut as his body is forcibly pulled upright and set on its feet. He’s half tempted to fold back down onto the cobbles again, but he has a feeling if he does that Alfie will quite possibly shoot him.

He’s now able to see Alfie’s face and the parts of it that aren’t covered in scrubby beard have reddened. Tommy looks into a pair of narrowed and dangerous eyes and asks calmly, “Was it you, Mister Solomons?”

“Tommy my boy,” Alfie answers, gently letting go of his shirt and patting it back into place, “You are coming dangerously close to getting yourself into some proper damage, do you understand me?”

The cigarette is still in his mouth, so Tommy reaches up and takes it out, flicking it off into the streets of London. “This is your turf  _ Alfie _ .” His voice is soft, and Solomons leans a little closer to hear him, “If anything like this happens to me again, on your turf, our deal is  _ off _ .”

He gets a snort in reply, “Tommy, one of these days I am very much afraid that I might have to kill you. I think that would be a shame, I really do. But the thing is, if you are stupid enough to let yourself get jumped in the middle of a street like this, there’s not much I can do to stop it, is there?”

“Was it a test?” Tommy asks, voice still low. There’s an anger raging up inside him, but the day he lets Alfie Solomons know he’s upset will be the day where at least one of them ends up dead, “To see how I react to getting jumped in a strange city? Some sort of strange ritual you have down here? Those men weren’t trying to kill me, if they were I’d be dead.”

Alfie rolls his eyes, and a heavy hand lands on Tommy’s shoulder, “Well if it was a test you’ve fucking failed it, haven’t you mate? Go on, get yourself home. Back up to that godforsaken northern shithole you live in. Leave London to the people that know it.”

Tommy keeps his face carefully blank as his legs manage to take a few wobbly steps, grabbing onto the side of Alfie’s jacket as he passes to hiss into the man’s ear, “If I find out that it was you…”

He hears a chuckle, and Alfie’s hand gently pats at the bruised side of his face “You won’t find out, Tommy. I’ll make sure of that for you, alright?” With that, Alfie slopes off into the London mist, leaving Tommy swaying precariously on his own, 


End file.
